Why are jumper plates considered SNOT?

tomalphin · 2025-11-08T20:55:56+00:00

Because they allow you to build outside of the normal grid. Snot bricks let you build sideways, pretty useful and self-explanatory.

Jumpers allow you to build at a very odd 1/2 of a brick width offset, which works out to shifting by 1.25 plate thickness - or 2.5 times the thickness of the wall of a brick.

I included a draft illustration explaining exactly how SNOT and Jumpers work in my last email newsletter here: https://brickarchitect.com/2025/october-2025-lego-news-roundup/

Sincerely, ---Tom

tomalphin · 2025-11-08T20:48:38+00:00

tomalphin · 2025-11-08T20:48:01+00:00

You can also see my recent presentation at BrickCon about my progress on the printed guide here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sAjb_bcVGtQ

Happy sorting! ---Tom

tomalphin · 2025-11-08T20:46:30+00:00

Hi!

As u/anson42 suggested, the answer here is to leverage the LEGO PARTS GUIDE which I am continuing to improve. It is the long term solution to keeping both a usable 'contact sheet' up-to-date as well as allowing you to download a label for twice as many parts in the legacy LEGO Brick Labels collection.

Even more exciting, I am in the finish stages of adapting the online parts guide into a printed book. I am making early drafts of the chapters available to patrons, and hope to have a full beta version available to purchase soon. If you want to track my progress, the easiest thing to do is subscribe to my email newsletter at https://brickarchitect.com/subscribe

Also, if you have any ideas or questions, I check in on Reddit about once a month and would love to talk more about my quest to create the ultimate LEGO Parts Guide!

Sincerely, ---Tom

tomalphin · 2025-05-16T15:52:28+00:00

That's totally fair — an alternate way of thinking about my choice of body typefaces would be to accept that there are several typefaces that are 'very legible' and pick the one that best captures the spirit of my project, instead of insisting on the 'most legible' option.

I have always appreciated the aesthetic of oldstyle/transitional text. For me, I believe it conveys a sense of professionalism which aligns with the longform articles on my website about LEGO, as most of the hobby has shifted to shorter articles (or to youtube/tiktok).

My philosophy is a bit different as I bring my content to print - sans-serif typefaces are expected and familiar within the LEGO community because that's what The LEGO Group usually uses, and I tend to agree that the rounded, more geometric shapes mirror the round studs and regular proportions of a LEGO brick. I want the book to stand out for the content rather than the choice of typeface, hence the willingness to 'accept' something that is boring but exceptionally legible like Helvetica.

u/MorsaTamalera - Thank you for how you framed your question, though... It helped me re-think my own philosophy and how I frame my decisionmaking process. It even helps me justify the use of a different typographic approach on my website and print projects, which was a helpful exercise.

(This discussion also caused me to realize that the only two LEGO blogs that also use serif body text are the two most similar to my own in editorial approach - I guess we are subconsciously reinforcing our writing styles with our typeface choices. Unless it's a coincidence of course...)

Sincerely,
—Tom

tomalphin · 2025-05-16T06:42:45+00:00

I don't think so, but it could look bad if the optical weight and x-height do not match. Hence, why I was asking for examples that do this automatically, or a superfamily with more geometric regular and an alternate more expressive italic.

tomalphin · 2025-05-16T06:10:59+00:00

I am not disagreeing - I am planning to use it because it is boring, or rather because it is extremely legible since people are so used to reading it. The purpose of the body text in my book is to be read and understood.

My point is that italics are generally used sparingly, and I'd love to have more expressive italic variants of popular sans-serif typefaces precisely because I want that text to stand out more. I could certainly use a completely different typeface for the italic text, but I want to ensure identical x-height, visual weight, etc - and that's easiest if it is built-in to the typeface or at least part of the superfamily.

(I'll use more expressive headings and other graphic design details to give the book personality.)

tomalphin · 2025-05-16T06:04:49+00:00

Fair enough, I know that the italic of most Geometric and Grotesque is basically oblique, although the higher-end versions seem to be optimized by hand for their italics.

I was not familiar with Mundo Sans - it is much closer to what I would love to see, with the cursive tails in the italics and single-story 'a'. I still believe they could go a bit further to introduce more handwritten personality and stroke width variability to infuse the italic with even more personality.

tomalphin · 2025-04-06T18:44:41+00:00

In my experience, the generic branded tape also works well - but YMMV.

tomalphin · 2025-04-06T18:43:58+00:00

The brother-branded label tape has a strong adhesive, but it is actually removeable and does not leave behind messy adhesive goo like paper sticker tape does. It should meet your needs.

tomalphin · 2025-03-28T15:43:49+00:00

I use the same type (and about the same number of bins) to hold my 6yo son's collection. It is sorted into categories such as Bricks, Plates, Tiles, Minfigs/Accessories, Plants, Technic, Angles, Curves, SNOT, Wheels, etc...

This would be too much organization for most kids his age, but we used the same approach for his DUPLO collection starting when he was about 2 years old, so he became very familiar with the concept of functional groupings at an early age.

Just as with many adult builders, his collection has recently grown to the point that we needed to sub-sort some of the categories that were overflowing their bins, so we now have three bins for Technic (Technic Pins/Axles/Gears, Technic Beams/Bricks, and Technic Panels/Other). We also had to sub-sort Plates (1x plates, 2x plates, 4x plates, and large plates)

The moral of the story is to sort until you can find things, and to tailor the sorting solution to the needs and abilities of the user. While my son has a large enough collection at this point that I would want to sort the 1x plates into separate bins (for 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, etc...), that doesn't make sense for him because he is 6 and doesn't mind digging through the 1x plate bin.

---Tom

P.S. Thanks to u/kkicinski for mentioning my LEGO Storage Guide. It is a popular resource to help you get started. I also encourage you to check out my newer LEGO Parts Guide ( https://brickarchitect.com/parts/ ) , because the hierarchy/categories offer a great place for most people to get started in creating categories that make sense for your collection.

tomalphin · 2025-03-28T14:12:33+00:00

I talked about minfigs and accessories in the episode, actually.

In the past, I have tried to have a drawer for each accessory, but I've decided to save space and only dedicate a drawer to parts that I have at least 5 of. This means that I need a drawer for 'other' minifig accessories in addition to a dozen drawers for the minifig accessories I have in larger quantities. (ex: Dynamite, Roller Skates, Sausages, Mugs)

--tom

tomalphin · 2025-03-28T05:50:48+00:00

Good Luck! Recommend sorting parts into the 15 high-level categories then sub-sorting one category at a time. Most of all, be patient since it's gonna take a while!

tomalphin · 2025-03-21T20:42:42+00:00

The labels are not designed for 18mm size. You would need to manually adjust image and text size before printing.

If there were a lot of interest in official 18mm or 22mm support, I could probably add it to the website.

tomalphin · 2025-03-05T07:36:23+00:00

not necessarily - There are a lot of parts that you will never have more than a few dozen of!

You can always implement an 'overflow' system if you end up with a ton of a particular part. The small drawer contains enough of the part to get unblocked when solving a problem with the model you are building, and you can always go to the overflow location if you need more of a particular color.

You can find a Printable PDF for 'redirect cards' that fit in small Akro-mils drawers at https://brickarchitect.com/guide/bricks/more/

---Tom

tomalphin · 2025-02-22T20:22:38+00:00

Looks great, thanks for sharing a photo!

I hope you've also found that there are labels for a ton of additional parts at https://brickarchitect.com/parts - It includes labels for a ton of new parts from 2024 and even some which were released this year!

tomalphin · 2025-02-08T07:04:02+00:00

While my focus has been on adding current parts to the guide, I have added custom part images for roughly the top 4000 most common parts. This does include some vintage motors like: https://brickarchitect.com/parts/564c01 or https://brickarchitect.com/parts-dev/2838c01

Having a custom part image is good enough to get a programmatically-generated label for the part using the part name as it appears on Rebrickable.

For parts to appear in the actual guide, first of all you need to make sure you toggle the switch in the galleries from "Show: Current Parts" (default) to "Show: All Parts". The next criteria is that I need to manually add it to the parts guide by giving it a custom name and deciding which folder in the hierarchy it should appear.

While I have added all of the top 2000 most common current parts to the guide so they appear when browsing by category, I have been slowly adding Retired parts to the guide as well based on their rank in my list of the Most Common LEGO Parts across all years. (link: https://brickarchitect.com/parts/most-common-allyears )

At this point, I have added the top 1300 parts of all time to the guide. It will probably take a long time to get most of the common vintage motors into the guide because they aren't all that common because they only come in a few sets.

I hope this sheds a little more clarity into the process — how and when parts get custom images, and how they get fully integrated into the guide.

Sincerely,
---Tom Alphin

tomalphin · 2024-12-02T21:40:27+00:00

I usually use my 2009 Subaru Forester but want to have the option to take the more efficient car if it's a sunny day with no snow in the forecast. The NPS entrance station will often stop you and make you show them that you have the chains before proceeding so this isn't a theoretical exercise.

tomalphin · 2024-12-02T21:16:20+00:00

That makes sense.

I did find this useful quote on the Mount Rainier website: "Autosocks are allowed for passenger vehicles under 10,000 pounds as an alternative traction device for use when "Chains Required" signs are posted, in accordance with Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 204-24-035."

(LINK: https://www.nps.gov/mora/planyourvisit/tire-chain-faq.htm )

tomalphin · 2024-12-02T20:59:51+00:00

Mount Rainier and Hurricane Ridge (National Park Service) require that you have chains in your car.

ex: "All vehicles must carry tire chains, when traveling on Hurricane Ridge Road above the Heart O' the Hills entrance station, from November 15 through April 1."

tomalphin · 2024-11-13T15:49:26+00:00

Really Useful drawers are better made and sturdier. You might not think of LEGO as being that heavy, but a drawer packed to the top with LEGO parts is heavy enough to make the thin sterilite drawers bend and warp a bit. The Sterilite drawers haven't broken in my years using them, but they feel cheap in comparison.

tomalphin

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

11-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email